Insights in Action: Driving Impact

Stravito Oct 19, 2023

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Rachel Pruitt, Director of Enterprise Insights Capabilities at Target.

If insights don’t translate to action and impact, do they really matter?

On this episode, we speak with Rachel Pruitt, Director of Enterprise Insights Capabilities at Target about her passion for transforming data in a way that empowers people and business alike. You probably already have a lot of the skills you need to drive more impact; it’s just about applying them in new ways.

Join us as we discuss:

Why you should stop sharing everything and what to do instead
The benefits of applying your research skills to your relationships with internal business partners
Critical role of relationships within your organization, and how they lead to action
What makes up the DNA of a successful insights team

You can access all episodes of the Consumer Insights Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Spreaker. Below, you'll find a lightly edited transcript of this episode.

Thor:
Welcome to the Consumer Insights podcast. Today I'm excited to have an incredible insights leader joining me for what I know will be an enlightening conversation. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Rachel Pruitt, Director of Enterprise Insights Capabilities at Target. She's a self-proclaimed human-obsessed leader, and she's passionate about understanding behavior and driving impact. Prior to her current role, Rachel had an impressive tenure working with consumer insights at General Mills. Thank you so much for joining me, Rachel.

Rachel Pruitt:
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Introducing Rachel

Thor:
Rachel, we want to get to know you. Could you take a couple of minutes to tell us about yourself, your role, your company, and how you got to where you are today? How did it all start?

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah. So you mentioned I'm the Director of Enterprise Insights Operations and Capabilities over at Target. You know, a lot of people say operations and capabilities like, "What actually is that?" And I think of it basically as making sure that our team has everything that they need to do their jobs really well. So that's everything from making sure we have the right partners we're working with, we have the right tools and capabilities to do research, we have best practices, training, things like that. My journey to here I actually think started a very, very long time ago. I grew up with deaf parents. And so that makes me a coda, a child of deaf adults. And that just instilled in me a really deep curiosity for people, and observing deaf culture versus hearing culture, and why did different groups of people do the things that they do? I was always asking why, just very curious, very analytical. So you know, fast forward. I go to school at the University of Iowa. I studied finance and psychology. So again, really analytical but fascinated by people. And I didn't really know how to merge those things at the time. So I took a job in finance at General Mills, did that for about four years, but it was in one of the roles that I was working on Pillsbury innovation. I was working on a cross-functional team that had insights. And that's where the big unlock was for me. I realized that you know, that's a place I can go. I can be analytical. I can study people and figure out why they do what they do, and then help translate that into what it means for the business. So I made that change, and I never looked back. I spent about 12 years in a variety of different insights roles at General Mills. And then just over a year ago, I made the jump over to Target and kind of stood up this operations and capabilities team within enterprise insights.

How to define an insight?

Thor:
Such a fascinating journey. And as an insights leader with your background, how do you define an insight?

Rachel Pruitt:
The age-old question, right? I think sometimes it's easier to start off by talking about what it's not.

I think an insight is not a fact, a piece of data, learning, or a key takeaway.

When you think about what is truly an insight, I think there are a few components to it. One, it has to be really a deep, deep understanding of something. And I think oftentimes that deep understanding is the underlying motivation that gets people to act or to not act. Why are people doing something, or why are they not doing something? And I think by having that understanding, it should unlock new opportunities or ways of thinking.

Thor:
Fascinating. And I think that's a very crisp definition. So Rachel, you mentioned that an insight is not a fact. And I think that resonates really well with me. But could you give us an example that helps us understand why that is true and why that is so important?

Rachel Pruitt:
An example that I have and love is, I was working on an innovation product, and we were looking at something that would make it easier for parents to give their kids pancakes. A fact would be, parents make pancakes for their kids once a week. That's the fact. Okay. What do you do with that? What does that mean? As we started really digging deeper and understanding, "Okay, why do you make pancakes for your kids?" They love it. "I feel like I'm making something homemade for them." All the things. Then we talked about, "Okay, well, why don't you make pancakes more often?" And there was, "It takes too long, and we've got to get the kids out the door," and all these things. They talked about the stress and the chaos of getting kids off to school and how much of that is about saying no, right? Because you just got to get them in their clothes, get them changed, get them out the door. And the insight that we came up with was, "Saying no to your kids sucks." That's it. Parents don't want to say no all the time; they want to be able to say yes and delight their children. So that had implications for the way we developed the product and some of the design requirements. It had implications for how we talked about it in our communications. It had implications for our packaging design. So going from "parents make pancakes for their kids once a week" to "saying no to your kids sucks"—those are very different things. You can understand how the latter gets at that underlying motivation around why someone does or doesn't do something.

The importance of insights

Thor:
And if we build on that, from your perspective, why are market and consumer insights so important?

Rachel Pruitt:
I think they're really important for a lot of reasons, and I think really important from two different perspectives. One perspective is the consumer perspective. I think it's really important that they feel seen and heard and understood, that their needs are being met.

And I think it's really important from a business perspective because I don't think a business can reach its full potential, succeed over the long run if it doesn't have a deep understanding of the people they're trying to serve.

And I think in having that understanding, it unlocks growth and opportunity from a business perspective. I fully agree. And I also know that you're particularly passionate about driving impact and action from insights.

How to turn insights into action: making an impact

Thor:
I fully agree. And I also know you're particularly passionate about driving impact and action from insights. Could you share a bit more about how you go about doing just that? And if you can, maybe share some stories around it.

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah. Before I jump into the "how" I do it, I'll touch on why I think it's so important.

And the why is because I don't think the work that we do matters if it's not being translated into action and impact.

Otherwise, we're just doing learning for learning's sake, which is interesting, but we're not making any meaningful change because of it. The way I go about doing that, and I just made this connection a few years ago, but I really think it's by leveraging the skills we already have and naturally have as researchers. Instead of understanding a consumer, it's understanding your business partner, and likely several business partners that have different needs and motivations. It's building deep empathy, asking probing questions to get to the underlying drivers, understanding what they're incented on, and then helping to show how the insights can help them deliver on whatever it is they're trying to do. An example of that, when I was working at General Mills, I was working on our convenience store business, and I was supporting a particular brand. We also happened to sell that brand on the retail side of our business. We considered them just kind of two completely separate businesses because we had different consumer targets based on who was shopping in a convenience store versus who was shopping in retail. What ended up happening was both of our businesses were declining. So my team dug in, tried to understand what could potentially be driving this, and what we found was our declines correlated with when we turned off the retail TV advertising. Prior to that, there was an assumption that the retail TV advertising didn't have an impact on our convenience store business because it was a different consumer target. So what we had to do was connect with our partners on the retail side and really understand what was driving them. They had their own set of financial metrics. They're not looking at the business across both channels. They had particular advertising that was very focused on their target. So what we had to do, understanding all of that, was show them why. One of the things we uncovered was the insight around why both consumers were consuming that brand was the same. So while from a demographic perspective, they looked completely different, the reason they ate this product was the same. And so we took that to them and said, "We've uncovered something that we think not only improves your communications but, from a General Mills perspective, increases the return on our investment, turns the business back around so that it's growing." Ultimately, we were able to do that, and we created an advertising spot that worked across both channels and saw a return in the business. But it wasn't necessarily easy to get our partners on the retail side to care about our business on the convenience store side.

Focusing on what matters in sharing insights

Thor:
That's such a good example. And you previously mentioned that you think insights professionals should stop trying to share everything. Can you tell us more about what you mean by that? And also, if you could dig a bit deeper and tell us what you think they should do instead?

Rachel Pruitt:

Yeah. So, humans have very short attention spans. I think I read something like people today now have the attention span of a goldfish, which is around eight seconds. And so, you know, that might be extreme, but

If you think about the fact that you have limited attention from your audience, while everything that we've learned might be important, not all of it is important to everyone, and not all of it is important all at once.

And so, you know, what I recommend that we do instead is, you know, once we've got this robust body of learning, take a step back and take a step away from all of the content and just think about, okay, who is my audience that I'm sharing this with? What is my goal with that audience? Is it to get them to start thinking differently? Is it to get them to make an action based on that? And then, thinking about those two things, take a step back, just take a piece of paper and write down what are the three things that they need to know based on what I'm trying—the ultimate goal that I want to come out of this. And I think in doing that, you're really able to simplify and tell them only what they need to know when they need to know it. The rest of the information can come later, but you've got to grab their attention from the get-go. And if you do that by trying to share everything, they remember nothing.

Applying research skills to strengthen internal business relationships

Thor:
So true. And you've also mentioned that insights professionals should start applying their skills as researchers to how they approach relationships with internal business partners. Could you give us some examples of that?

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah, I mean, I really think that kind of goes back to the example with our retail business and our convenience store business. Ultimately, at least for me, I wasn’t always thinking about this, but

I have these skills as a researcher that I’m applying with consumers all the time. Why am I not taking those same skills and applying them internally with my business partners?

And that goes back to the things we talked about like building empathy, asking probing questions to get at underlying motivations, understanding what their goals are. All of that stuff that we’re used to doing with consumers—do that with your business partners. And then when it comes to sharing with them after we’ve done the body of work, I think it’s a lot like advertising principles. So it’s how do you say things multiple times? Be really crisp and concise. Is your message tailored to your audience? All of that, I think, are skills we inherently have or have built, and we just need to apply them with our internal partners as well.

Thor:
And if we continue on the topic of skills, what skills do you think are essential for insights professionals today?

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think curiosity is perhaps the first one that comes to mind. And I think, again, that applies with both consumers but also our business and our business partners. I think critical thinking and knowing how to be a true strategic partner is really critical. It’s one thing to have deep research skills, but also understanding how to translate that, which means you need to have business acumen and an understanding of what drives the business.

The DNA of a successful insights team

Thor:
And if we take a slightly broader perspective, what would you say is the DNA of a successful insights team?

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah, I think that’ll differ across organizations based on the organization's needs, and honestly, I think that will change even within an organization over time. But I think the things that might be consistent are one, having a really clear vision.

I think the team needs to understand why they exist and what they’re doing for the broader organization. Within that, each team member needs to have a clear understanding of how their role and their team help deliver on that vision.

From there, we need to ensure the team has the resources they need to do that, which is where operations and capabilities teams like mine come in. So, making sure they know their role, they have the resources, and they can translate that into impact through storytelling.

Thor:
And if we build on that to look at the role of the insights team within the organization, how do you go about elevating the role of insights?

Rachel Pruitt:
I think that comes down to understanding the organization’s goals and needs, and understanding who your key stakeholders are. A lot of times, we’re not necessarily clear on who our stakeholders are. So, being really clear on that, being clear on who the decision-makers are, and then showing those partners how the work we do helps them achieve their goals. Then they care about it, right? We’re in it with them. We’re all working towards the same thing, and if we do that, it makes insights really hard to ignore.

Thor:
You’re a self-proclaimed human-obsessed leader. What would you say makes a human-obsessed leader?

Rachel Pruitt:
I would say it’s about being just as passionate and curious about your team members and colleagues as you are about the consumers that you study. It’s about making sure everyone around you feels seen and heard, that you understand what motivates them. That’s going to be different for every single person that you work with, and in understanding that, tailor the way you interact with and show up for those individuals

Best career advice: lessons that have inspired me

Thor:
And if we think about people that have inspired you during the course of your career, what are the best elements of career advice you’ve ever received?

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah, I’ve received a ton of great advice over the years, but the one that really sticks with me is “Nobody cares about you as much as you.” That sounds harsh, but it came from the first Director of Insights that I worked with. His name is Steve Odette. So, Steve, if you’re out there, hi! But he gave me that advice because I was stepping away from a meeting, and I was concerned about what I had said and whether I had said the right thing. I was agonizing over it, and he just looked at me and said, “Rachel, nobody cares about you as much as you. No one is still thinking about that thing you said. Stop agonizing over it.” And that has stuck with me throughout my life, both professionally and personally.

Because I think if we care too much about what others think, we’re going to hold ourselves back, and it’s okay to mess up.

Don’t worry about it. I think that can apply to so many aspects of life.

Future of insights: opportunities and evolution

Thor:
So true. And looking ahead to the future with that advice in mind, what opportunities do you think there are for insights professionals to make a true business impact and to challenge the status quo? How do you think the insights function needs to evolve?

Rachel Pruitt:
Well, I think one, don’t be so worried about what other people think. Two, it has to go beyond just doing really good research. We have to be doing so much work on the front end and the back end. On the front end, we need to make sure we truly understand what our stakeholders need, the questions that need to be answered. And on the back end, make sure that we’re truly driving action and impact from that great work. I think doing that will naturally elevate the role of insights.

The world is changing so quickly, so I think agility is a huge part of that, and being comfortable leaning into the new technology and capabilities that are out there.

that enable us to save time in areas where maybe we're used to spending a lot of time and maybe more comfortable spending time in those spaces to free up the time to really prove out the value of insights. You had something in your LinkedIn header where it said… What was it? Something about insights and turning them into enterprise assets. I love that because I think we truly need to get organizations to see the work that we do as assets or as investments, and not just as an expense.

The short and long term impacts of GenAI

Thor:

Fantastic. Yeah, I know. I think what the LinkedIn header says is turning insights into enterprise assets. I’m glad you reacted to that. But if we double-click a bit on the future component, a lot of people are talking about generative AI, and some people are trying to utilize it. There’s a lot of exploration going on. What is it that you think it could give us in the short term, and what do you hope it will give us in the long term?

Rachel Pruitt:

Yeah, in the short term, I hope it gives us more time—not having to spend hours analyzing something, coming up with a top-line summary. If we can lean on generative AI to do that initial work for us, it frees up our time to figure out, “Okay, why does that matter? Does it matter? What do we as a business need to do about that?”

So, in the short term, I’d say time. In the long term, I hope it enables us to scale and have even greater impact than we have today.

One of the things we talk about a lot is, it’s both a blessing and a curse that we have more data than we know what to do with today. If we can leverage tools and capabilities like AI to help us truly ingest and analyze all of that data, that can really help us do more and elevate the role of insights.

Thor:
And on the flip side, if we take a challenges perspective, what do you see that could face insights professionals and the wider industry in the near future?

Rachel Pruitt:
Yeah, I think businesses, right now, are in a tough spot. A lot of businesses are looking for efficiencies and ways to cut costs. So again, going back to your point about turning insights into enterprise assets, which knowledge management is a key part of, if we don’t do that and show that insights are truly an investment that will pay dividends in how the business performs, then we’re at risk of going away. And also, with all these tools and capabilities out there that can do some of the work we’re used to doing, if we don’t show the value of having a human in the process, understanding and interpreting the data, and translating it into action, our industry could be at risk. And I don’t think that’s good for anyone.

Thor:
We need to do everything in our power to ensure that doesn’t happen. It really hurts me, but we’re getting towards the end of this podcast recording. And as much as I would have loved to spend more time talking to you, I have one last question for you. It’s a question I love to ask, which is, who in the world of insights would you love to have lunch with?

Rachel Pruitt:
Such a good question. I’m afraid I might disappoint you with my answer, but I don’t have a specific person in mind. What I know is, I would like to talk to someone who’s an expert in behavioral science. I was Googling this because I thought, "I’ve got to find a specific person for Thor!" And a Forbes article came up. It was all about the 10 experts in behavioral science you should know. What I loved about it was that all 10 of them were women, which led me to find out that about 70% of experts in that field are women. What fascinates me is how these women apply their knowledge to do good in the world—to help get people to want to contribute to charities, to encourage people to do good. So it would be one of the women from that list.

Thor:
Wow. Thank you. I wasn’t aware of that, and I appreciate that you shared that. Now I know something I didn’t before. Wow, this has been such an amazing conversation, Rachel. Your perspective on the industry is truly unique. There are so many things you’ve said that we can all learn from. I’d love to replay some of the moments of our conversation, elements that have really stuck with me. If I start off with your definition of an insight, you reminded us that an insight is not a fact, it’s not a piece of data, it’s not simply a learning or a key takeaway. What is truly an insight is a deep, deep understanding of something. That deep understanding is the underlying motivation that gets people to act or not to act. You also reminded us on the topic of empathy that consumers need to feel seen, heard, and understood. Businesses won’t succeed in the long run if that doesn’t happen. The why is that the insights work doesn’t matter if it’s not translated into impact. Lastly, you reminded us that humans have a very short attention span. Everything we’ve learned might be important, but it might not be relevant to everyone, and it surely does not need to be communicated all at once. Force yourself to have clarity around the three things they need to know based on the ultimate goal you are optimizing for. I’ve learned a lot from talking to you today, Rachel, and I’m sure our audience has as well. Thank you so much for joining me.

Rachel Pruitt:
Thank you for having me.

Brand Perspectives

Insights in Action: Driving Impact

Introducing Rachel

How to define an insight?

The importance of insights

How to turn insights into action: making an impact

Focusing on what matters in sharing insights

Applying research skills to strengthen internal business relationships

The DNA of a successful insights team

Best career advice: lessons that have inspired me

Future of insights: opportunities and evolution

The short and long term impacts of GenAI

Related Content

Democratizing Insights to Drive Innovation

2023 Year in Review, Part 1

Measuring, Capturing and Paying Attention

Subscribe to the latest podcast updates